Roderick Hallowell Macpherson, better known as "Sandy Macpherson of the BBC Theatre Organ" was born at Paris, Ontario, Canada on 3rd March 1897 to Roderick Charles Macpherson and Eleanor Mary Carnegie. His grandfather was a farmer near Laggan, Badenoch, who emigrated and took part in the Gold Rush of 1849.

     In 1910, the family moved to Amherst, Nova Scotia, where Sandy took his first organ lessons, and at the age of fourteen got his initial engagement as a cinema organist. He attended boarding school at St. Andrew's College, Aurora, Ontario and left school at the outbreak of World War I. In September 1915 he was sent on an officers' training course and was commissioned in the Canadian Corps of Engineers but then discharged on medical grounds.

      Macpherson worked for a time as a lumber jack before becoming a full-time cinema musician. In 1927, to his delight, he was engaged at the last word in cinemas, the newly opened Empire Theatre in Leicester Square, London. In the years that followed he entertained some of the most fashionable and certainly the most varied audiences in the world. He became one of the best known people in show business, as well as one of the most popular.

      In 1938 he was appointed Staff Organist to the BBC. In September 1939 came World War II, with a great BBC exodus from London. However, Sandy remained and achieved considerable exposure playing up to 12 hours a day, and filling in with announcements. In 1941 he was 'blitzed out' and moved to Llandudno, Wales and two years later to Bangor where he continued to broadcast regularly on the BBC Theatre Organ.

      Following World War II, he lived in St. John's Wood, London, and continued to play the BBC Theatre Organ. He left the BBC staff and went 'freelance' but continued to broadcast on the BBC and perform at concerts around the British Isles. Until his retirement in 1970, Sandy Macpherson was truly a household name.

     Sandy had many interests outside of music, including being Vice President of the Reedham Orphanage at Purley, Surrey; Vice President of the Glasgow Badenoch Association and a member of the Clan Macpherson Association. He married in Ontario in 1921 and died at St. John's Wood, London, in 1974 on his 78th birthday.